NO-ONE has fought the early release of James Bulger's killers harder than his mum Denise.

Few will forget her tortured face as she poured out her heartbreak after the abduction of James.

It was three years later that she joined a campaign - for the country's first 24-hour victim support helpline, the Victims of Crime Trust.

Denise, now Mrs Fergus, revealed at the time: "I went to counselling, but if there had been a telephone number to dial I would have preferred that.

"Somehow, it is a lot easier to talk to a stranger about these feelings at the end of a phoneline.

"When James was murdered the grief came over me like a veil. I really could not see faces. I could only recognise voices."

But she battled through the heartbreak and four years after James's death found happiness again with electrician Stuart Fergus.

The pair had met through a mutual friend after the break-up of Denise's marriage to James's father Ralph, and they married in 1998.

She said at the time: "I feel different, alive, stronger. I feel like a new person. I am with my new man and I could not have wished for a better person."

The Justice for James campaign was set up to raise funds to help her pay for the legal fight to keep her son's killers behind bars.

In 1999, Denise, 33, told a panel of European judges why she believes her son's killers should not be released.

She was given the unprecedented opportunity to air her views through her legal team in a landmark case at Strasbourg's European Commission of Human Rights.

She said: "Victims should have the right to have their views taken into account and I have always maintained that life should mean life.

"It really sickens me to hear them whinge that their human rights have been breached.

"It was my son whose human rights were violated when he was tortured and killed."

She took her justice fight on to the internet in December last year when she said: "I want to see them locked up for at least 15 years and the fight is not over yet. It is dangerous to let them out so soon.

"It is like they are being rewarded for the horrible and vicious killing of my defenceless little boy; the parole board must keep them locked up.

"If they served a full and just sentence they could be released without the need to spend more public money on protecting them."

The mother-of-three said she felt she had been "slapped in the face" following a court order granting James's killers anonymity in January this year.

She led a march through Kirkby to mark the eighth anniversary of her son's murder and to highlight her campaign in February.